


Faithless

by esama



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Loss of Faith, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 14:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12134442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: Obi-Wan loses his faith in Tatooine





	Faithless

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed

Obi-Wan wakes up to the sound of wind, brushing across the sand outside. It was quiet, barely discernible sound, a thin grace of roughness against the silence. Comparison to the noise of his dreams, it should be soothing.

It grates, though.

For a moment he lies there, on the hard cot under a thin blanket, wrapped tightly in his robes and cloaks under it. The nights of Tatooine are freezing and his little hut doesn't have any sort of functional atmospheric regulators – he's still shivering under all the fabric. Soon, though, soon the first sun would rise and then the second, and slowly the heat would start creeping in, spreading it's tendrils across the sun scorched rocks until it became oppressive and –

He was never going to get used to Tatooine's cycle of temperatures. From icy nights to burning days, with barely a breath's worth of something more pleasant in between. At night his bones ache and his old scars twist as if shrinking in the cold, tightening the weary muscles around them, tugging at skin not quite as supple as it used to be. At day, the heat quickly bears down on him, heavy and hard and all too much for his very human physiology, over heating and dehydrating him on daily basis.

They said that the desert sun of Tatooine could age a man decades in a single year. Obi-Wan doesn't doubt it in the least – it's already shaving off years of his life, the cycle of cold and heat, frost and burn.

He's shivering and cold under the blanket and he doesn't want to get up. It would be colder to get up, every movement an ache until he finally managed to limber up for proper function – and then, like always, just as he started to feel more like his old self... the heat would come. Staying in bed won't stave it off, he knows that, but still.

More and more he wonders what is the purpose of getting up early.

Meditation, he thinks. Morning routines. Ablutions. He should get up and stretch out his cold stiffened muscles and limber his sinews as well as he can – he's already lost enough of his flexibility in his prolonged inaction. Maybe today he could force himself to perform some katas. He should – he's been letting them fall more and more to the wayside.

He should make some tea, he thinks, and then remembers he's out. He drank his last leaf a week ago.

He should visit settlement – the Oasis maybe, to restock. Obi-Wan needs some more food at any rate – and mineral and vitamin supplements. Salt, if nothing else. He should finally buy that tool kit too, or at least some general purpose tools, for maintaining his little vaporator, the only thing in this damn desert that's keeping him alive.

A twinge of something rises in his chest at that thought, and he looks away from the sand stone ceiling and to the small window by the doorway. Through it he can see the shadow of the vaporator. Old model, barely functional – it had been there when he'd got the hut. Most days, doing maintenance on it is the only thing he does. The only reason he bothers to get out of bed.

Sometimes he really wishes...

No.

That's an unworthy thought.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Obi-Wan sets it aside. Irritation – should release it into the Force.

He doesn't do that either.

It's been weeks now since he last meditated. Like so many things in life, it just doesn't serve a purpose anymore.

* * *

 

It's been a year.

Year since they lost. Year since they died.

Obi-Wan keeps in touch with the Galactic news as much as he can, removed from society as he is. He visits the local settlements every so often and every time he does, he looks in on whatever bit of recent information from outside Tatooine they have. It's never pleasant, but with each month it has slowly grown less and less terrible.

The inexorable, insidious propaganda about the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Old Republic has done its job. For months the news had gone over and over all the missteps and mistakes the Old Republic had done, the points where it had failed, way it had inevitably collapsed, like it had been expected. A slow moving, slow acting behemoth of a government which had never been able to succeed at anything, too lazy, too gluttonous for it's own power to act.

In comparison the new and energetic Empire is getting everything it sets out to do done at record speed, no longer hampered by the weight of parliaments and meetings and committees. And it is indeed getting things done. And no longer at gun points, even.

At this point, the gun is forever implied, even if no longer present. And people are getting used to it. The chaotic birth of the Empire is over – it is settling into power and the Galaxy is settling into its new form of... peace. And it shows. People are getting bored of finding horror in their new situation and so it is starting to be normalized. They are simply the Empire now, and that's that.

Jedi are being purged from public knowledge. People still remember, of course, people still _know_... but the memory is being slowly painted over with more propaganda. A failed religious order given too much power too soon, put in charge of tasks they were ill equipped to deal with. Who had been so foolish as to put an order of _monks_ in charge of an army? And not just an army, but army of perfect soldiers genetically engineered for perfect obedience. Of course they fell into corruption, just like the Republic they served.

Religion, the new Emperor says, has no place in government.

Once upon a time, Obi-Wan would have found that highly amusing.

Now, every video and holo of the Emperor shows a dark clad, masked figure at his side, and even though the cold recordings Obi-Wan knows him. Even if he hadn't gotten intelligence from Organa... he knows who it is.

Thankfully, Tatooine doesn't get live-news from the Galaxy. Like Obi-Wan, it too is too far removed to matter.

* * *

 

Once a week, Obi-Wan forces himself to head to the Lars farm. Not close enough to be seen, he never goes to visit. It's not that he's unwelcome; he even gets the impression that they might like him – they definitely pity him... but he can't.

Luke Skywalker is one year old now and his hair is sun bleached and sandy brown, just like his father's was, before the artificial light fixtures of Coruscant and thousands of space ships drained it of its light. Over the sands of the farm, his laughter echoes, loud and free and unhindered, as he plays with whatever he can make a toy out of on the hardy farm. The Lars family love him.

Obi-Wan keeps his distance, hovering by the rocky cliffs at the very edge and staying only long enough to glimpse the boy, to see him well and happy – and then he goes away again, before he can think too deeply of it.

* * *

 

The realization comes slowly.

He doesn't just get up one morning and decide that he's lost his faith – there is no moment where his world shifts. Rather it slinks in slowly over weeks, over months, as he meditates less and less, as he stops even thinking about performing his katas, as he stops trying to keep up with his old habits.

Slowly, the reality settles in around him, like the Empire settles over the galaxy, an inexorable hopelessness.

And like so many things now, it makes no difference.

* * *

 

Yoda had said that Qui-Gon had achieved Oneness with the Force. Maybe he had. Obi-Wan couldn't feel it, couldn't sense him, and couldn't hear him. Force was still there, as it always had been – and it is no less light, no more dark, than it had ever been. Jedi were gone, Sith rule the galaxy, and Force remains the same. Unchanged.

For a while Obi-Wan thought that this, this was the Balance the Chosen One of the Force was supposed to bring. For a while he thought that the Jedi were the unbalanced factor in the Galaxy which they, in their own righteous superiority, hadn't seen. Too much Light and not enough Dark – so Anakin had balanced everything. Jedi were gone now, dwindled down to _two_ as far as Obi-Wan knows and in balance with the two Sith that now ruled the Galaxy... perfectly balanced, on the razor edge of abyss.

But nothing in Force had changed. It was the same it always had been, the same it had been everywhere Obi-Wan had reached for it. It was... just there. The death of thousands of Jedi had had little impact on it, once their screams had passed and the Force had settled. The rule of Sith had little impact on it, even as they spread their darkness across the galaxy, infecting everything with _evil_.

"Evil," Obi-Wan murmurs, the first thing he's spoken in weeks in the silence of his hut.

He thinks of the news, of the galactic events as they funnel down to Tatooine, what little they learn about it. There must be thousands of atrocities going on throughout the galaxy's millions of worlds, that they will never hear about in Tatooine. Millions of people dead, their corpses piled upon those of the Jedi, that the Empire was expertly covering up.

Evil, Obi-Wan thinks, and reaches for the Force.

It doesn't feel Evil to him – and perhaps... that is the problem he now has with it.

* * *

 

Some days are worse than others. No day is really good, anymore. There aren't days he doesn't feel the sabre that cut through his thigh. There aren't days where he doesn't feel the sting of old torture. He can count the blaster burns by how much they ache each day.

Bacta's regenerative properties have their limits, it seems, and the cycle of hot and cold in Tatooine seems to strip layers off old healing, bringing old scars to the forefront as the flesh around them grows wearier.

His hair is going white now. He's not sure if it's the twin suns or if he's missing something vital in his diet – the mineral and vitamin supplements he takes are definitely not enough to maintain his usual health, not with the constant stress Tatooine puts his body under. At his temples and on the top, his hair is not only bleaching of it's colour under the sun, but it is loosing its pigment as it grows. His beard, he notices as he trims it, has streaks of white in it.

Worse yet, his vision has started to grow blurry thanks to the glare of the suns.

What a reward he gets for a hard life of servitude.

Another unworthy thought he doesn't release into the Force anymore. Instead he takes it and examines it at length, peering at the weary bitterness it belies, at what it tells about him. Both that he is loosing some of what might pass for grace under pressure… and that he is still strong enough to feel bitter. It is highly un-Jedi like at any rate.

He should – he _should_ do better. Luke will grow older, one day he will be old enough to be trained – one day... Obi-Wan would have to take him as his padawan, or all of this would be for nothing. He should do better now and try and hold onto his training, onto his discipline, onto his.... faith.

A Jedi does nothing for a reward – this situation he is in is neither a reward nor a punishment and he deserves neither because that is not what the Force is for. It doesn't _reward_ devotion. And he has never been devoted because he searched for reward.

And yet, it feels undeserved. It feels... unfair.

Obi-Wan trims his beard and watches white push from under the ginger. He's not even forty yet, he thinks, running a hand over his beard.

Already he looks older than Qui-Gon, at seventy, ever had.

* * *

 

There is no Will of the Force.

That is the realization Obi-Wan has come to, his new heresy and faithlessness.

It had always been a more vague aspect of the Force, something not quite written down – but it been the belief that sat at the heart of the Jedi Order. It was the unspoken Core of their Code, because the Code only works if the Force has a Will.

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

Without a Will of the Force, the Code is an empty vow of inaction and indifference – of self centrist meditation on peace and nothing else. After all, the Code denies everything, except the Force. But the Jedi weren't merely monks dedicated to a life of meditation – they were more than that, and they did more than that. They acted; they made decisions – galactically important decisions. Their actions had _enormous_ consequences.

And so, Will of the Force was demanded – a higher guiding authority of the Will of the Force was _necessary_ for the Jedi Order to function. So, by sheer necessity forced by their own actions, the Jedi had Faith and they Believed. They _trusted_ that the Will of the Force guided them, and so as long as they trusted the Will of the Force, they could do no wrong. Their actions still had consequences but so as long as they followed Force's guidance... their actions would be just.

Will of the Force had them, and it would take care of them. If they made mistakes, it was according to the Will of the Force. If they were injured, it was as Will of the Force had deemed it. If they died, it was as Will of the Force had decided.

But there is no Will of the Force.

It is a mindless force of nature – an intangible energy field that binds the Galaxy together with no will of its own. Some people can touch it, interact with it, even use it, but that didn't make it intelligent. Its power is undeniable, and even in his new lack of faith Obi-Wan doesn't deny its sheer might. The Force reaches into the past and into the future, that he knows for a fact, through the Force one can see visions of those times... but that is all they are. Visions. Not guidance.

The Force doesn't guide, it doesn't will, and it doesn't lead.

The Force just... is.

Obi-Wan contemplates on the nature of Force as a mindless energy field for a long while, as the suns set and the cold descends on his hut. It seems the cold seeps right into him, sinking into his bones even faster than before but for once... it doesn't feel like punishment. Because the Force doesn't punish those that fail its designs.

If there is no Will of the Force, then there is no Destiny. There is no Fate.

And there are no Chosen Ones.

**Author's Note:**

> Some people expressed wish to see this as it's own fic, so... and I did kinda start writing this with a multichapter fic in mind. It went different way than the time travel I had in mind but who knows.


End file.
